One of the beauty’s of the Sony mirrorless system is also one of its downfalls. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a issue from Sony. The issue of banding in the photographs is due to the electronic shutter and certain lights . I’ve seen this is other mirrorless cameras too. There have been a handful of people asking how bad is the banding issue? They’re scared to switch over from their traditional canon or nikon dslr because of it. Note* Even traditional dslr can suffer from refresh rate of lights and sync speeds. Here is one example of that. Both images shot on a Canon 7d at 1/500 ~ f2.8. One image is clearly brighter than the next. Main shadow to the back on one, and the front on the next. This is the cycle and refresh rate of lights.

As of 2017, the technology of cameras and electronic shutters have banding issues at high shutter speed is just something we have to deal with across the board. Not just from Sony.

You can still shoot the standard mechanical shutter just like in your dslr. If you switch to mechanical shutter and still see banding, remember to also turn off electronic first curtain. Turning off efc also helps if you have issues with highspeed sync and flash. The banding is only an issue when using the electronic shutter with specific lights… I repeat, specific lights and at specific angles. There are other blogs that delve much deeper into the specifics of why this is happening but I just wanted to share my personal experience.

For me, shooting on Sony a7rii, and Sony a9, I have found that 1/80 shutter is the magic number.

First example was shot on an a7rii at f4 ~1/100. You can see faint banding on her arm and dress. I pulled a crop of that section to see it closer.

Here is a photo at f4 at 1/60 shutter. The banding is pretty noticeable on her arm in the foreground and on the back of the girl to the right (click image to see larger). The second shot from that same angle was shot at f4 but at 1/80. All banding in the shadows is gone and you have to look really close to see any banding still on the musician in the yellow dress.

Shooting at 1/80 gave me the best results during this show. I self edited (deleted in camera) during the show and got rid of the higher shutter images that has really awful banding so I dont’ have examples to show. Here is a final image, again shot at f4 ~ 1/80. I also posted a small gallery of images a while back, Atlanta Chamber Players. All images shot at 1/80.

Continuing to another show, and shot on a different mirrorless camera. This performance was shot on a Sony a9. Again in electronic shutter mode. During the previous show, it was a classical performance so it was important that I make no noise. The next images could have been shot using mechanical shutter because the ‘click’ noise would be drowned out. I shot in electronic shutter 1. for faster burst options and 2. for the primary reason of no black out of the screen (only something on the sony a9).

The top image was shot at f4 ~ 1/125. There is noticeable banding in the background lights. The bottom image though was shot at 1/80. This image from a similar angle shots at 1/250 again with noticeable banding in the background with the green lights BUT none in the foreground where there were blue lights.

Same stage, same lights but a different angle and at 1/80. Notice zero banding, beautiful photo. Except of course I had to shoot at 1/80 and end up with a bit of motion blur.

On a completely different stage. I shot this image at f4 ~ 1/500 on the Sony a9 using the Sony 12-24 lens. Not a single bit of banding anywhere in frame! So like I said, it depends on the lights and what angle they are. A perfect example of this is in the video below.

One last example of the banding issue. Here is a short video panning across the stage at a rave. I muted the audio. Sony a7rii, I don’t recall the setting. 24fps 1080p. There are several examples of the banding and these changes depending on the color of the light and the angle it is. Some lights are fine, sometimes its really bad. Watch the curtains in the background too.

NOTE* Girls dancing on stage at rave. No nudity, but still maybe NSFW. 😉

I’ve been shooting product photography for a bit now. I’ve had thousands of pieces come across my table and I thought I’d share a bit of my experiences. The goal with these photos was a pure white background to display on a companies website. The catch is creating a setup that I can shoot a hundred products on each day. I didn’t have the time, like traditional product photography, to position and change lighting for each piece. In this specific case I came in a couple months ago with ‘literally’ a room full of things that needed to be photographed for KEH.com. It’s an amazing company here in Atlanta that buys and sell photography equipment. If you’re looking for a piece of gear, check out their site.

For my set up,
I had a standard 4ft table against a wall with a piece of white seamless pinned up. I gobo/boomed an arm with one softbox strobe overhead and a second to the side. The second light was more to the side and facing the background, so it wasn’t set on a 45* like most photo shoots but it still provided a lot of light on the product. I’d tilt this light left/right to throw more light on the product or more on the background. I didn’t have much control over the output power on these lights, basically they’re both ‘on’. I adjusted the distance of the lights and my camera settings to get my default for an ideal photo. Most of the time I left the overhead lights on since my shutter basically killed ambient light anyhow. I used a tripod with ball head so I could position the camera easily and quickly for each shot but keep it in place as I made adjustments to each photo. My general setting were. ISO:100 F:18 Shutter:1/160 using Sony a7rii with Sony 24-70 f4 lens. I liked the a7rii because I would shoot in medium jpg (web use only) and could jump between crop and full frame mode depending if I’m shooting a full size tripod or photographing a small Leica lens and get the zoom range from the same lens = 24-105.

The key to my set up was two parts.
First was the ‘stage’. I picked up two small plastic bins to hold a piece of 18×24 plexi/lexan/acrylic (your choice). By sitting the products on the plexi I was able to bounce light at angles from under the product for a rim light with no shadows. You’ll always run into the issue of shadows if you sit anything directly on your white seamless paper. I also have a small pile of things to help pose products. Scotch tape, paperclips, a clear tic-tac container, etc. These things make it so I can prop things up or hold up one side of something, but still being clear it would disappear in the photograph and not leave a shadow (like a ninja) 🙂

The second, and more creative part of the project was a stack of foam core cardboard. The foam core board is always the tricky part. Using different cut sizes of black/white board I would modify and shape the light for each product, but again quickly without having to move any lights. Sometimes I would use large gator clips to stand two small 5×7 pieces of black board to the back left/right of a product to catch the reflection so it wouldn’t be blown out and lost. You can see that here. It’s just enough black reflection off the board to see the curve of the lens. *the boards would be cropped out.

The second part of the foamcore board was the white board used to prevent blown highlights, but in a much softer way. Here are three photos. The first is just the lights. You can see the chrome is blown out white. The second is holding a white board over the camera to the left. This cast a shadow on the front of the camera and added contrast to the dial but still had a blown out top. The third final image was holding the white board again but after I moved it around to find the sweet spot. The strobes still light the subject but they dont reflect against the chrome and make it disappear. All three photos were taken using the same light set up, and same camera settings.

This is what I’ve found to work the best for me to create working product photographs. Of course my techniques can be modified and the photographs perfected if you have more time to tinker with the details. So far I’ve been happy with the results, and the clients been happy I get more than 15 pieces photographed in a day 🙂

I hope this has been helpful to others trying to shoot products of their own. Please feel free to drop a comment in the section below with examples of your own work or if you have any question.

DragonCon 2017, what a year…. what a crowd! Every year this convention grows. I feel like this was the number one complaint from everyone I talked to though, the crowds are insane. Atlanta isn’t a small town anyhow, but putting 90,000 people in a couple square blocks is a sight to see. Granted the larger conventions are able to bring larger names, like Matt Smith (Dr Who), and Stan Lee (Marvel) just to name a couple.

None-the-less it was still a great time. I loved seeing all my friends, having the opportunity to hang out, and see/hear some amazing performances. Below is a preview of my 2017 convention. Click HEREfor the full gallery. All images are free to use for non-commercial use with credit to chphotovideo.com.

Starting the gallery are a handful of backstage portraits with the wrestlers. Yes, wrestlers. DragonCon puts on a wrestling match (trained group of people) and they put on a great show! Since a couple other photographers from the crew were covering the matches, I figured I would take a different approach this year.
As usual, I always photograph the late night material, so I get to listen to some amazing musicians and dj’s. There was a proposal during the Triforce Quartet. Congrats Kevin! The group GLANK was something new, they were actually an amazing group of percussionists using all sorts of materials to create music. Also, a personal favorite was DJ Gilbert Carrizales who wrote a majority of his music just for this show. Great guy too. Check out his soundcloudHERE.

With DragonCon coming up this next week here in Atlanta, I’m getting hyped for another exciting year of media creation!! I’m going into it this year with a goal. Not just my typical event coverage but I have a plan for some posed images w/ strobes as well as some video content. I filmed/cut a highlight video back in 2012 and figure its about time to revamp my DC experience 🙂

In light of the upcoming con I wanted to share a handful of shots from past conventions. Of course every photo has a story to go with it. A couple of my fav’s are:
~The little boy with the Mythbusters has a sign that says “I want to be cremated with flamethrowers by Adam and Jamie!”. Another Mythbusters shot where Adam says “omg, you look more like me than I do”
~Ensign Kim (Garrett Wang) as a red-shirt holding a baby over head yelling “We sacrifice this baby to the Trekie gods!.. no no, I’m just kidding, we’re not sacrificing anyone. Here’s your baby back ma’m.”

The new SunTrust Park aka home of the Atlanta Braves is a pretty amazing place.
I had the opportunity to cover a private event on the xfinity deck, which has a top notch view of the stadium. I even met Mr Reggie who was a model in a previous life 😉

This was a timelapse from a camera I stuck up in the corner on a studio shoot I assisted with. The very talented Greg Mooney was the mastermind behind this shoot. Check him and his work out at www.gmooney.com